- Joined
- Jan 24, 2021
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- 2,110
I’ve been getting back into daygame after having reduced it to something very sporadic (for a variety of reasons that aren’t really relevant). As I started approaching again, almost immediately I was dealing with a lot of approach anxiety, difficulty managing state, and general unease with my sense of capability.
Having been in and out of daygame before, I knew what I had to do to enable a good start: a meditation warmup, a consistent routine, and a focus on obtaining a positive result at the first step of the interaction – engaging her, getting a smile, a returned greeting, establishing a positive frame in which we were both wanting to move forward - and focusing on progressing one step at a time.
…
Imagine an athlete getting ready to perform a race after a long time off. No warmup, no practice, no building back up of the instinct, the muscle memory, the flexibility, the fidelity of the transmission from brain to limb. They just stand at the starting line and start running as fast as they can.
What are the chances it will end well? Very little. The joints are sore and weak, the muscles are tight and inflexible, nothing feels coordinated and it’s like gravity doubled since they remember winning the last one.
Almost immediately they feel pain – something got pulled too hard. But, angry at the situation, and determined to keep going, they limp along. Afterward, the injury takes a long time to heal. But instead of taking the time to pull back and exercise it properly, they go right back the next day. Same deal, but worse.
Eventually, the injury becomes chronic. The body reforms to accommodate the injury, not their ideal performance, not the way that their body was originally designed to move.
…
Daygame is not a standard social interaction. It is elite level athletics. It is well beyond what everyday social situations prepare one for. It must be trained over time, consistently, with the right regime, adapted to the person’s natural abilities, strengths and weaknesses. And when someone dives right in without a good mental foundation, they can easily pull something and put themselves out for a while.
It’s easy to think that psychological things and physical things are very different, because psychological things are not ‘real’. But this is simply wrong. The mind can be injured or sprained by being stressed too much. Deep negative psychological reactions in social settings are no different than a jolt of pain in the muscles of the leg or arm. They exist somewhere concretely, and can be consistently provoked. The injury in both cases must be identified, examined, massaged, gently worked and rebuilt until it is strong.
In both the cases of excessive physical and psychological stress, the body often already knows what to do, but it must be given the proper conditions for healing and strengthening. In the case of an injury, it is often enough to reduce activity and progress from very low stress to higher and higher stress over a long period of time, starting with the activity that causes a very tolerable level of pain/stress.
It is the same with the mind. Often, all that is needed is to progress slowly from simple social exercises to more and more difficult or stressful ones. In doing so, the consciousness rebuilds its perception of its own limitations and capabilities, its comfort zone and abilities, until the pain (the negative reaction or loss of state) no longer occurs.
…
Where does meditation fit into this? It’s basically a warmup, a stretch, a preparation to release the full potential of one’s psychological capabilities.
If the athlete had warmed up properly, it is very likely that rather than injuring themselves, they would have simply found their limit painlessly. Nothing sprained, pulled, or inflamed, just a general slowness and lack of fitness that must be built up again.
They would feel clearly the point of tiredness, the chest pumping too hard, the burning of lactic acid in the legs. They’d chuckle and say “Jeez I’m not fit anymore. I can only do X seconds before I start to slow down. Gotta work on my endurance”. The correct strategy is clear, and their body, though spent, is ready for the next day of training, according to the strategy derived from the information gathered.
This is exactly what happens with a good meditation routine. The mind relaxes, becomes open and flexible, able to be curious, able to give without expectation, able to accept without resentment, able to find beauty in the world around it, excited at the prospect of peeking over the fence to see the other side of its limitations but not panicking or becoming angry about how long it will take.
With meditation, one does not exactly become immediately skilled at social situations. What one does become is ready. Ready to take action, ready to meet, ready to express, smoothly and at ease, to the best of one’s ability. And most importantly of all, ready to learn.
And the things that one cannot do, rather than being signalled with a flash of pain and an injury that takes an interminable time to heal, are signalled simply with a result – one that may not be everything one desires yet, but that comes with experiences, information to process, and often, a general understanding of where everything didn’t quite come together. Because instead of being blinded by a mask of pain or consternation, the mind is simply alert and aware, able to hear the whisper of the instincts and the intuition which usually already have some idea of what is going on.
And the mind, calm and relaxed within itself, observes the path ahead, which may be long or short, and feels not anxiety or anger, but that stirring, restless excitement as it gathers momentum toward its goals.
Having been in and out of daygame before, I knew what I had to do to enable a good start: a meditation warmup, a consistent routine, and a focus on obtaining a positive result at the first step of the interaction – engaging her, getting a smile, a returned greeting, establishing a positive frame in which we were both wanting to move forward - and focusing on progressing one step at a time.
…
Imagine an athlete getting ready to perform a race after a long time off. No warmup, no practice, no building back up of the instinct, the muscle memory, the flexibility, the fidelity of the transmission from brain to limb. They just stand at the starting line and start running as fast as they can.
What are the chances it will end well? Very little. The joints are sore and weak, the muscles are tight and inflexible, nothing feels coordinated and it’s like gravity doubled since they remember winning the last one.
Almost immediately they feel pain – something got pulled too hard. But, angry at the situation, and determined to keep going, they limp along. Afterward, the injury takes a long time to heal. But instead of taking the time to pull back and exercise it properly, they go right back the next day. Same deal, but worse.
Eventually, the injury becomes chronic. The body reforms to accommodate the injury, not their ideal performance, not the way that their body was originally designed to move.
…
Daygame is not a standard social interaction. It is elite level athletics. It is well beyond what everyday social situations prepare one for. It must be trained over time, consistently, with the right regime, adapted to the person’s natural abilities, strengths and weaknesses. And when someone dives right in without a good mental foundation, they can easily pull something and put themselves out for a while.
It’s easy to think that psychological things and physical things are very different, because psychological things are not ‘real’. But this is simply wrong. The mind can be injured or sprained by being stressed too much. Deep negative psychological reactions in social settings are no different than a jolt of pain in the muscles of the leg or arm. They exist somewhere concretely, and can be consistently provoked. The injury in both cases must be identified, examined, massaged, gently worked and rebuilt until it is strong.
In both the cases of excessive physical and psychological stress, the body often already knows what to do, but it must be given the proper conditions for healing and strengthening. In the case of an injury, it is often enough to reduce activity and progress from very low stress to higher and higher stress over a long period of time, starting with the activity that causes a very tolerable level of pain/stress.
It is the same with the mind. Often, all that is needed is to progress slowly from simple social exercises to more and more difficult or stressful ones. In doing so, the consciousness rebuilds its perception of its own limitations and capabilities, its comfort zone and abilities, until the pain (the negative reaction or loss of state) no longer occurs.
…
Where does meditation fit into this? It’s basically a warmup, a stretch, a preparation to release the full potential of one’s psychological capabilities.
If the athlete had warmed up properly, it is very likely that rather than injuring themselves, they would have simply found their limit painlessly. Nothing sprained, pulled, or inflamed, just a general slowness and lack of fitness that must be built up again.
They would feel clearly the point of tiredness, the chest pumping too hard, the burning of lactic acid in the legs. They’d chuckle and say “Jeez I’m not fit anymore. I can only do X seconds before I start to slow down. Gotta work on my endurance”. The correct strategy is clear, and their body, though spent, is ready for the next day of training, according to the strategy derived from the information gathered.
This is exactly what happens with a good meditation routine. The mind relaxes, becomes open and flexible, able to be curious, able to give without expectation, able to accept without resentment, able to find beauty in the world around it, excited at the prospect of peeking over the fence to see the other side of its limitations but not panicking or becoming angry about how long it will take.
With meditation, one does not exactly become immediately skilled at social situations. What one does become is ready. Ready to take action, ready to meet, ready to express, smoothly and at ease, to the best of one’s ability. And most importantly of all, ready to learn.
And the things that one cannot do, rather than being signalled with a flash of pain and an injury that takes an interminable time to heal, are signalled simply with a result – one that may not be everything one desires yet, but that comes with experiences, information to process, and often, a general understanding of where everything didn’t quite come together. Because instead of being blinded by a mask of pain or consternation, the mind is simply alert and aware, able to hear the whisper of the instincts and the intuition which usually already have some idea of what is going on.
And the mind, calm and relaxed within itself, observes the path ahead, which may be long or short, and feels not anxiety or anger, but that stirring, restless excitement as it gathers momentum toward its goals.
